yourdover
Overview
yourdover was a free weekly newspaper for Dover in Kent, England, published by KOS Media in the first wave of the publisher's 'Your' series of free midweek papers in the summer of 2007. It appeared on Wednesdays and described itself on its cover as the newspaper for Dover, Deal, Sandwich and the surrounding villages — a strapline later shortened, in some editions, to Dover and the surrounding villages. Its website was yourdover.co.uk, and like its sister titles it was produced from the publisher's headquarters at Smeeth, near Ashford.
The paper's archive is one of the fullest in the series: 268 editions were preserved, running from the print years into the e-edition period after printing stopped in January 2011. A defunct-newspapers listing records its closure in December 2012. Its pages survive as a detailed weekly record of a port town at a moment of argument about its future, and it is written about here in the past tense.
Publisher and Origins
KOS Media was launched in 2002 by Paul Stannard, a former executive with Adscene, Kent Regional Newspapers and Trinity Mirror Southern, and its first title was the free Kent on Sunday. The 'Your' series was announced as a £1 million project in 2007: eight new free weeklies for different parts of Kent, each with a website and an online video service, aimed in part at younger readers. Dover's title took its place alongside papers for Ashford, Canterbury, Folkestone's Shepway district, Maidstone, Medway, Swale and Thanet. The group intended each title's print run to match that of the traditional paper of record in its area, distributed free from pick-up bins each Wednesday.
The company behind the paper changed during its life. Archant had taken a minority interest in 2005 and invested £215,000 in 2008 and £300,000 in 2009, as its share of the Kent company's losses grew amid a shortfall in advertising revenue. In June 2010 Archant bought KOS Media outright, setting up, as the trade press noted, a heavyweight clash with the family-owned KM Group, the dominant local publisher in Kent and publisher of the paid Dover Mercury. In Dover itself, the town's paid papers were the Dover Express, from Kent Regional News and Media, and the Dover Mercury, while free competition included the KM Group's Dover and Deal Extra and KOS Media's yourdover.
The Print Paper
Archived issues trace the paper's weekly progress. Issue 62 was dated Wednesday 12 November 2008 and issue 117 Wednesday 9 December 2009, a numbering consistent with a launch in early September 2007. By issue 152, dated 25 August 2010, the paper was a substantial product: the contents listed letters on page 14, leisure across pages 19 to 30, a competition, jobs on pages 44 to 48 and sport on pages 50 to 51. Issue 167, dated 8 December 2010, carried leisure, motors and sport sections of similar weight, and promoted eating-out guides and the publisher's video service inside the paper.
The formula combined genuinely local news with the shared commercial sections — property, motoring, jobs and classified advertising — that financed free distribution. Readers were encouraged to receive news on mobile phones through the publisher's free apps, and the front pages carried the Kent News web address and, later, social-media prompts to follow KOS Media. The masthead's promise of coverage for Dover, Deal, Sandwich and the surrounding villages held until 2009, when Deal and Sandwich received their own 'Your' editions and six new jobs were created by the expansion.
Coverage and Content
No local subject dominated yourdover's later print years more than the future of the Port of Dover. In August 2010 the paper reported the port's chief executive calling on the local MP, Charlie Elphicke, to drop his idea of a people's port and back its privatisation bid, setting out the arguments at a town council meeting. The story ran on into 2011: the issue of 9 March 2011, by then an e-edition, led on a planned referendum on the port's ownership, reporting a packed meeting at Dover Town Hall, alongside the launch of a new drop-in centre for young people and a discount retailer's plan to create 25 jobs in the town.
Other front pages show the range of a small port-town weekly. In December 2010 the paper reported parish council fears that hundreds of new houses on and around the Crabble Athletic Ground, home of Dover Athletic Football Club, would cause chaos, and news that the new community hospital for Dover would be built at the Buckland site, saving residents return journeys to Ashford, Margate or Canterbury for outpatient appointments. In December 2009 it reported a winning design for the town's seafront, a scheme of three concrete waves reflecting the White Cliffs, intended to reconnect the beach and the esplanade. Port, planning, health and the seafront were the paper's recurring beats.
The Port Town It Served
Dover's news was shaped by geography. The Port of Dover is the nearest English port to France, at just 34 kilometres away, and one of the world's busiest maritime passenger ports, handling 11.7 million passengers in 2017 along with millions of lorries, cars and coaches. The modern port is divided between the Eastern Docks, the main cross-channel ferry terminal, and the Western Docks, with a cruise terminal, marina and cargo facilities. For yourdover's readers, the port was employer, neighbour and argument at once, which is why its ownership could fill a town hall.
Behind the port stood the town's older landmarks. Dover Castle, dating from around 1180, commands views of the sea and the road to London, contains a Roman lighthouse within its walls, and holds the tunnels from which the Dunkirk evacuation was directed in 1940. The town had been an important coastal settlement since Roman times, when it was known as Portus Dubris, and the White Cliffs themselves, formed of chalk, framed its identity. Samphire Hoe, the nature reserve at the foot of the cliffs, was created from the chalk marl excavated to build the Channel Tunnel — the fixed link that competed with, and complemented, the ferry port the paper covered so closely.
Digital Presence
yourdover was conceived as a print and digital package: the website yourdover.co.uk carried the title online, the YourKentTV service offered local video, and journalists across the series were trained to produce video reports as part of their working week. That groundwork became the paper's lifeline in January 2011, when the publisher stopped printing all its 'Your' titles except Tunbridge Wells and moved them to e-editions produced with page-turning technology. The Dover e-edition kept the printed paper's appearance and pagination, as issue 178 of March 2011 demonstrates.
The publisher reported that the change produced a 50 per cent increase in web traffic within three months and that about 180,000 people a week subscribed to or accessed the e-editions. The December 2010 restructure that preceded the change, prompted by challenging trading conditions, had put eight jobs at risk. Managing director Paul Stannard argued the online move was not about the cost of printing and that it freed money to expand the flagship Kent on Saturday and Kent on Sunday; the e-editions, unconfined by print, could experiment with embedded video.
End of Publication
The defunct-newspapers listing records Your Dover closing in December 2012, with 268 archived editions — the joint pattern of the 2007 titles, which mostly ended that month. No print revival followed, and the Dover district's free-paper field was left to other publishers' titles while KOS Media's remaining energy went into its weekend papers, themselves closed in 2017 when Kent on Sunday ceased publication. The 'Your' name disappeared from Dover's newsagents and pick-up bins as completely as it had arrived in 2007.
Place in Kent Media
yourdover's run captured a particular media moment. For three and a half years the town had, alongside two paid papers and a rival free title, a free weekly devoted to the Dover district, produced by a Kent publisher investing to challenge the county's dominant group; for two further years it had the same paper as an e-edition, an early local experiment in replacing print with a replica digital product. Its surviving issues — port referendums, hospital decisions, housing disputes and seafront designs, recorded week by week — remain one of the fullest chronicles of Dover's public life between 2007 and 2012.
